Obr

So politicians tell lies in order to win votes. Who knew? But in the age of social media, when more people read fake news stories -- stories that have been deliberately invented in order to mislead people -- than real stories, the lies have more power than ever before. Sure, they may well reflect real fears and real anger, but they are still lies.

The public seem less convinced by the failed politics and failed economics of the past than ever. What people do want to see is a credible alternative to austerity that holds out hope for the future and removes fear and insecurity from people's lives.... As opinion polls show clearly, the British people don't believe in George Osborne's 'long-term economic plan'. And nor, it seems, does he.

The simple truth is that many employers can afford to pay more. For large companies in sectors such as food production, banking, construction and software/computing - which employ over 1 million low- wage workers - paying all staff the living wage would mean an increase of less than 0.5 per cent of the total wage bill.

With the fiscal situation still tight, and a year to go before an election in which the Chancellor will accuse the opposition of fiscal profligacy, it was never likely that this was going to be a particularly exciting budget - and so it proved.

This Friday, I'll be taking to the stage in Trafalgar Square, and shouting from the top of my lungs that we do not have to be fed up, that we do not have to accept this. At midday I'll be joining One Billion Rising, a global campaign that has made it its mission to end violence against women, and rising up for justice for women here in the UK and far further afield. We will call for political change, from mandatory sex education in schools, action to ensure that women in immigration detention centres are safe from violence, and the repeal of visa laws that tie domestic workers to their employers and put them at serious risk of exploitation. We will dance and sing - and we will make ourselves heard.

There's nothing in economic theory that says you pause a third of the way through a deficit reduction programme which has gone way off track; nor does the fiscal framework, now effectively defunct with the abandonment of the debt target, dictate this approach.

As well as targeting specific funds to get stalled schemes in our most buoyant cities moving, we need to see more autonomy for cities to drive investment in new housing. By removing the restrictions on councils' ability to borrow money against their existing housing assets to invest in new housing, industry experts suggest councils could borrow an additional £2.8bn to invest in new housing.

Amidst this week's economic gloom were two bright spots of the jobs market. First, new stats from the ONS led to widespread reports that employment had again reached record levels, with the number of people in work rising 131,000 in the quarter to 29.7 million. Then the OBR upgraded its forecasts for employment over the next few years.

The first substantive line of George Osborne's budget speech was: "We've now cut the deficit not by a quarter, but by a third". This might be surprising to anybody who read my earlier blog here, which pointed out that the deficit had (measured on a rolling twelve- month basis) been rising, not falling, for the last year or so.

In this experimental piece I attempted to convey the confusion associated with domestic violence and leaving a partner you love by speeding up and slowing down the footage depending upon the point in the narrative.

Rarely, in recent memory, has something I read crawled so under my skin. I chanced upon Natalie Gyte's vitriolic and irrational diatribe against Eve Ensler and her recently launched One Billion Rising (OBR) campaign right before I was about to go to bed. The factual, philosophical and logical craters in Gyte's essay 'Why I Won't Support One Billion Rising' swallowed my sleep for the night. But what truly kept me awake were the unnecessary personal attacks against a brave woman and her path-breaking work.